ESPN’s Peter Schrager posted his annual mock draft on Wednesday and after weeks of connecting the L.A. Rams to Makai Lemon, he’s switching up his pick on the eve of the draft. The Rams draft Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq after making a trade to move down with the Detroit Lions.
Schrager has the Rams trading down from 13 to 17 with the Lions and adding pick 118 plus a 2027 second rounder. The Lions traded up for tackle Kadyn Proctor and the Rams end up with Sadiq:
There’s a lot of Sadiq intrigue in the
Rams’ building. They already have multiple contributing tight ends, but that depth chart could look different in a year — especially since current TE1 Colby Parkinson is a free agent in 2027. Sadiq is an explosive pass catcher who could help Matthew Stafford in a key go-for-it year in L.A., and you know coach Sean McVay would figure out ways to get the ball in Sadiq’s hands. This would be the second year in a row that the Rams took an Oregon tight end after going with Terrance Ferguson in Round 2 last April.
There’s an interesting element to Schrager’s intel with the Rams because he worked fairly closely with the team, and Sean McVay, when he was at the NFL Network studios in Los Angeles. It sounds like Schrager was hearing Lemon for months and all of a sudden now he’s hearing Sadiq.
Sadiq is an athletic freak who ran a 4.39 40-yard dash and had a 43.5” vertical at the combine. Lance Zierlein compares him to Trey McBride, arguably the best tight end in the league right now.
A versatile tight end with a shredded physique and alluring potential as a volume target, Sadiq’s route tree will be full of branches. His athleticism and break quickness should allow him to uncover against man coverage on all three levels. He’s talented after the catch, with the ability to make things easier for play-callers and quarterbacks looking to move the sticks. He has the body control and hand strength to win contested catches but will occasionally allow balls to hit the ground on lower-difficulty plays. He’s adequate as a blocker, giving good effort in-line and locating and landing on linebackers as a move blocker. Teams looking to diversify their passing game options with a talented pass-catching tight end could make Sadiq a priority.
It would still be unusual for a team to draft tight ends in the top-50 in back-to-back years. Can Sadiq and Terrance Ferguson coexist on the same offense again? Especially when they won’t be the only two tight ends on the Rams.
But if that’s what Schrager is hearing, it’s worth it to listen.
